Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle (28 page)

The metallic ships dropped toward the atmosphere of the miniature planet, guiding the little transparent car. The movement of the car from the point where the ships had attached their hawsers to its arrival at this planetoid had been a smooth and easy one.

But still Clive wondered at the nature and the intent of the Chaffri. The battle between the Chaffri ship and the Ren had been a classic confrontation suitable only in the conduct of implacable foes. The destruction of the white Ren was beyond Clive's comprehension. Representatives of a culture so advanced that it built craft to travel almost casually between the planets had then engaged in mortal combat armed only with axes. Clive had expected them at the very least to use ordolite energy weapons.

But axes?

They circled above a flat, grassy plain located on one of the islands that had to pass for continents on the planetoid. The passage of air created a screaming sound that shook the walls and vibrated the glass panels of the car, but they held.

The metallic ships dropped the hawsers, but they still surrounded the car and maneuvered it toward the plain.

"Can we escape, Smythe?" Clive asked.

"Not possible, sah. And besides, I thought the Major wanted to beard the lion in his den, so to speak, sah."

"The lion—the Gennine! But we have reached the headquarters—or at least a base—of the Chaffri, not the Gennine."

"Even so, sah. At any rate, sah, we couldn't get away even if we wished to. Those metallic ships have us outnumbered, outpowered, and outmaneuvered. This little car was never meant for serious combat. The ordolite mortar is a child's popgun compared to the armament of those metallic ships, Major Folliot, sah."

Clive pondered. "I suppose you're right, Smythe. Sidi Bombay, do you concur?"

"Without hesitation, Clive Folliot."

"Very well, then. Set her down, Smythe."

"Yes, sah. I've already commenced to obey, sah."

The transparent car spiraled downward. The grassy plain had been converted into something resembling a naval facility. Clive could see strips laid out that resembled docks, buildings that were the equivalent of pier facilities, and roads leading away from the area, disappearing into lush woods. He could only guess at their destinations.

The car touched down on rich grass and slid gently to a halt. Horace Hamilton Smythe methodically shut off its propulsive units and turned to unlatch the glass panels through which they had entered the car. He stood aside to permit Clive the privilege of being the first to step from the car.

All around them, Clive could see metallic craft coming in for their landings. Each of them was far larger than the glass car, could easily have dropped the car and a dozen more into its cargo hold, if the metal ships had cargo holds.

Red, gold, blue, green, silver, orange, bronze, one after another the sleek machines landed.

As each touched the earth and came to a halt, its ports opened and crew members poured forth.

But Clive and his companions were greeted by a party that emerged from a shed located near the woods.

The party consisted of men in splendid military garb, fancy uniforms of crimson and gold and blue and green that would have set to shame the fanciest dress uniforms of Her Majesty's military establishment.

The leader was a splendidly attired fellow whose gold-fringed shoulder boards swayed with his every step. His headgear resembled that of an admiral, and a tall plume rose from it to dip before the gentle breeze that coursed across the landing plain.

A sash that swept from shoulder to waist was covered with orders and decorations. A ceremonial shortsword clanked in its scabbard.

Clive peered at the man, trying to determine his rank, or even the branch of service of which he was an officer.

The man halted and saluted smartly. "In the name of the Chaffri, Clive Folliot, I welcome you and your companions to Novum Araltum. I am Muntor Eshverud."

Startled, Clive darted glances to Sidi Bombay and Horace Hamilton Smythe. They offered no suggestions. Muntor Eshverud—the name offered no clue as to the man's origins, nor did his speech, which was slightly accented but which Clive was baffled to place. Except—

Except that Eshverud used English, not the patois that Clive had learned was common in most regions of the Dungeon.

What could that mean?

Eshverud had lifted his spotlessly gloved hand in a military salute, and Clive returned the gesture uncomfortably.

"If the distinguished guests would be so kind as to accompany me to the field office." He gestured to the shed from which he had appeared. But—Clive blinked—was it a shed? The building was a bit larger than he'd thought at first, and its architecture was homey and attractive, rather different from the crude board construction he thought he'd seen.

He fell in beside Eshverud and noted that Horace Hamilton Smythe and Sidi Bombay similarly paired off with members of Eshverud's party. They set off at a brisk pace toward the building. Clive heard Horace Smythe anxiously questioning his companion about the care that their car would receive. The replies were reassuring. Sidi Bombay was engaged in dialogue, apparently on the subject of mess facilities and supplies.

"We observed your encounter with the Ren ship, Major Folliot," Muntor Eshverud said. "You were fortunate that our patrol encountered you in time. Those are nasty things, those Ren craft. Nasty as the creatures that build and fly them!"

"You are at war with the Ren, sir? I did not quite catch your proper title."

"Muntor. My name is Eshverud. The other is my grade and position in Chaffri society."

"Very well, sir. And my prior question, if you please?"

"Yes. At war with the Ren. I suppose you might call it war. If a campaign of extermination is suitably termed a war."

"Extermination, sir? I have never heard of a war in which it was the acknowledged objective of one party to exterminate the other. Do you mean to annihilate the enemy to the last man, woman, and child?"

Eshverud smiled bitterly. His brow was massive, his whole face was broad. A thick mustache, perhaps blond in the Muntor's youth, now almost white with age, rose at its tips toward muttonchop whiskers.

"The last man, woman, and child, Major Folliot? A poignant phrase. Yes, I believe that the Ren would exterminate us to the last man, woman, and child. If they had the power to do so. Unless they chose to maintain a domesticated stock for food. They dine on the flesh of Chaffri, you know. Not often—there aren't enough of us to meet the demand. So we're considered a great delicacy among the Ren."

"I encountered a giant Ren when I first entered the Dungeon, Muntor Eshverud. In 1868, when I was in search of my brother."

Eshverud nodded. "They infest the Dungeon."

"The one we encountered—it had devoured humans and it displayed the countenance of my own brother. It cursed me in his voice!"

"The Ren have terrible powers of the mind. I do not doubt your story, Major—it is altogether credible. But I would suggest that the Ren plucked the image and the sound of your brother's voice from your own brain, and fed the information back to you in order to serve its own ends."

"I have come to believe that, yes, Muntor."

They were close to the shed. Now Clive realized that it was an inn, built in the Tudor style, half-timbered and covered with a roof of thick thatch. It had been full day when the glass car landed on the grassy field, but night fell swiftly on Novum Araltum, and the sky was already darkening. The sun was half hidden beneath the horizon, stars twinkled, and nearby asteroids wove a broad, glittering belt across the sky.

From a low chimney, a lazy stream of smoke rose slowly, and Clive could smell the familiar odor of burning peat.

The door of the inn was fitted with pebbled panes of amber-tinted glass. Lights from within gave the glass a warm, golden glow. Muntor Eshverud ushered Clive through the doorway into a world at once hauntingly familiar and disquietingly strange.

As an English gentleman he would not have frequented workingmen's pubs, yet he certainly knew what they were. There had been reason to visit them in the Dungeon, and he had encountered one, to his distress, upon his return to London.

Yet this establishment was not exactly a nineteenth-century pub. It had some of the feel of a country inn of an earlier and more wholesome age. He half-expected to see rural bumpkins, the hayseeds falling from their hair, raising tankards of ale and haunches of mutton. There was indeed a genial publican presiding over the proceedings, while serving wenches in daringly cut blouses and billowing skirts made their way skillfully among long common tables of broad, rough-hewn planks.

"Is this—pardon me, Muntor—" Clive addressed his companion, "is this the headquarters of an aerial base of the Chaffri? I fear that I do not understand, sir—although I will concede that it is a homey and pleasant place."

Eshverud smiled. He guided Clive by one elbow, maneuvering him through the crowded common room. He stopped at the bar and bent to speak with the publican. Even above the din of the room, filled as it was with drinking, eating, joking, singing, roistering Chaffri, Clive had no difficulty in making out the Muntor's words.

"Two everflowing tankards of your best, Jivach, for
Major Folliot
and myself. A platter, of good hot food. We'll be in a private dining room, the major and myself. And if I know my guest's tastes, Jivach, make it a point to send in your prettiest serving wench. And don't expect to see her back too quickly, Jivach."

And the man actually winked!

Clive let himself be steered into a private room where the furniture, although crudely hewn, was more than comfortable. Light came from an oil lamp, and the air smelled like England.

The two men sat on opposite sides of the wooden table. There were a million questions that Clive wanted to ask Eshverud. Questions about the Chaffri, about the Ren, about the Dungeon—and about the Gennine. There were so many questions, covering so immense a variety of topics, that Clive hardly knew where to begin.

But before the dialogue had gotten very far, there was a knock at the door and Muntor Eshverud called, "Come ahead, then!"

The door swung open, and the serving wench turned to shut it behind her even before she had set down her cargo. Clive caught but a fleeting glance of her, yet even in that instant he was utterly taken with her dark, glossy hair, her soft skin that glowed creamy and golden in the light of the oil lamp, the graceful figure and the generous bosom that swelled beneath the inadequate confines of her low and flimsy blouse.

He sat up with appreciation and waited for her to turn back toward him. She bent over her task, placing tankards of ale and platters of meat and rolls on the wooden table. As she did so, the material of her blouse billowed away from her warm bosom.

Clive blinked.

The serving wench straightened.

Their eyes met in startled recognition, and simultaneously they cried each other's names.

"Clive!"

"Annabella!"

 

Without thinking, Clive rushed to Annabella—and she, to him. They embraced in a breathless rush of passion, their bodies pressed together like those of eager lovers, their mouths pressed to each other's as if each held for the other the ambrosia of life.

At last, for the moment sated, yet trembling, they managed to seat themselves. Still they remained, each with an arm around the other's shoulders, each holding the other's hand, each gazing into the other's eyes.

A chill ran through Clive at the thought that this Annabella was still another trick, a simulacrum or an illusion created to mislead him. But she was so warm, so real—the heightened beating of his heart, the tightening of his chest, the excited joy that he felt would not be denied. She had to be real! How had she come to Novum Aral turn? How could this woman of nineteenth-century England be employed as a serving wench in an establishment on another world?

The questions would keep. She was Annabella!

"I expected never to see you again. Oh, my darling Annabella! I wanted to go to your home—to Plantagenet Court—but I knew you were no longer there. That in shame you had sailed away to America and settled there forever."

"I did that, Clive. I waited as long as I could for your return to England. I was… with child, Clive. Clive, with your child. With your daughter."

"Yes, yes Annabella. I know the whole story. I—"

"How do you know?"

"I was told by my great-great-granddaughter.
Our
great-great-granddaughter, my darling Annabella. Is it so strange to think that we have so remote a descendant? She is Annabelle Leigh, of the city of San Francisco in the United States of America. And she came to London in 1999, and from there was transported to the Dungeon."

"I have heard of the Dungeon, Clive."

"You were never there?"

"No, my darling. I never left Boston. Once I reached the New World, I determined that I would never turn back, never return to England. But I had no idea of the Dungeon. I lived my life, raised my daughter, taught her—" She blushed, the crimsoning of her skin visible not only on the softness of her cheeks but on the tenderness of her bosom.

"I know the law of your family.
Do as you will, take such lovers as you choose, bear a daughter, and teach her to do the same… and never, never marry
."

"And my girls have kept that law—unto the year 1999, you say, Clive?"

"They have."

A smile crossed her face, a smile less soft than those Clive Folliot was accustomed to seeing on Annabella. "But how did you come here, to Novum Araltum? And… your age, Annabella. You appear little older than the tender maid I knew in Plantagenet Court."

"I would have waited for you in England, Clive, if I had been given any reason to expect your return."

"Did you never hear from me after I left? I wrote you letters—many of them."

"I never received them."

"I know. That was my shame. I wrote them only in my mind."